Ray's Runners

Anchors Aweigh - part 1

Everything in Australia is poisonous

Covon, Kayless, and Ruthless all received a group call in the late afternoon from a strange number. A clearly inexperienced “Mr. Johnson” got their contact info from a friend of a friend who knows a guys… He contacts the team as he is in need of someone experienced in property retrieval, something that needs to be returned to him and his client. Kayless agrees to a meet where they can negotiate terms and learn more of this job, agreeing to meet at a local dive bar Tuesday afternoon at 22:00.
Once the team hangs up the call they realize that they only know to meet a “Mr. Johnson” at a local dive bar at 22:00 tomorrow, but nothing more about who this is – no other description, no photo, no identification to find the person in the bar. Kayless asks around about the dive bar, to see what types of rumors exist, only to find that it is a rather inconspicuous location, a bar where locals go to drink away their paychecks and sorrows.
Arriving at the dive bar an hour early the team realizes this is not the typical meet locale, rather this dive bar has an open mic spoken word night, filled to the brim with beatnik artistic types. Covon scans the crowd and finds the Johnson, sitting in a corner booth waving profusely at the team. No one in the bar even acknowledges the runners, everyone is transfixed on the person on stage at the mic. The Johnson activates a small white noise generator while Kayless commands a flyspy drone to circle above the group with its directional jammer active to give the team more privacy.
Mr. Johnson tells the team that he is willing to pay 50k per person on the team and 10k upfront (for a total of 60k) if the team is able to retrieve an object for him. He needs this object returned in the next few weeks. Kayless attempts to fast talk the Johnson, hoping to compliment him enough that the job will pay more. Some crude negotiation later and the Johnson is willing to pay 75k per team member with a 15k being an advance. The team accepts and gets down to the specifics of the run.
The team needs to retrieve an item known as the Sextant of the Worlds, which has shown up in a recent CAS navy photo. This artifact is in possession of Captain Samuel J. Barret, CASN, and Captain of the newly commissioned CSS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier. The item was given to Capt. Barret by an unknown person whom asked for him to act as a courier, delivering the item during the stop-over in Thailand to a buyer.
The carrier is on deployment as part of the Carrier Strike Group 1 (CSG1) and is sailing along with Carrier Strike Group 2. The ship has just left port in Lima, Peru and will stay over this next weekend in Melbourne, Australia before continuing through the Asia Pacific islands to port again in Thailand. The team must retrieve this item from the captain’s display case in his quarters aboard the CSS Kitty Hawk and return it to Mr. Johnson before the ship arrives in Thailand, where the item will be transferred.
Mr. Johnson passes the team a portfolio of information – schematics and deck plans of the ship; bills of lading; crew manifest; bios of the CO, XO, CMC, and Master at arms; ships schedule. Mr. Johnson is also able to arrange for transportation and rental vehicles for the players if the need arises.
Assaulting a carrier is no joke and not to be taken lightly, whether at sea, via air, or even in port, the team decides to arrange some prep as they travel to Australia. Upon arrival the team needs a scuba instructor, a climbing instructor, two grapple guns with stealth wire and catalyst rods, two Lampreys, four sets of diving gear (one troll sized), and four wet bags. Kayless paid the 7,000 deposit for safe return of both Lampreys and 9,500 for gear/instructors. The team then uses another 5,000 per person from the advance to pay for a coyote to get to Australia with a subsection of gear.
Before leaving town the team decides they need some matrix support on-site; Kayless calls Sweetwater to convince her to join the team. She is bothered by the idea of sneaking onto a military vessel at sea, hacking state of the art, cutting edge matrix equipment onboard the ship, then sneaking away. Last time she got caught and was in a black site for months on end. She is willing to provide matrix support and overwatch, but Kayless is unable to convince her to go with them in person. Covon calls Rorschach whom is able to track down a kiwi combat decker who goes by the name of Da’ Stroker. This new ally is not only up for the mission, he is craving the thrill of such a dangerous op. Da’ Stroker passes the team a VR marker for a bar in Sidney where he will await the team (bar tabs on them!) and also sets up local transportation for the team to go to a safe house.
The team lands in Sydney uneventfully Thursday morning early, hops in the transportation van, and heads to a local safe house. This is a tenement style apartment building full of local gangers of all different colors and flavors. The team unpacks gear in their little 2 bedroom (if you can call it that) flat. Covon then approaches some of the nearest gang leader and asks for some paid security of their flat. After some “rough” Covon style negotiation (read: knocking all five of the gangers unconscious, restraining them, healing them, and then continuing to want to pay the gang for security) a price of 1,500 for a month is agreed on both sides. The Rusty Nails will keep watch over the safe house and alert the team to anything untoward.
The team gets some local flavor info from the Rusty Nails, including a local bar known as Jim’s as a place of potential info. This bar just happens to correspond to the same dive bar Da’ Stroker sent. Heading over to Jim’s, the team meets up with Da’ Stroker, has some drinks, then heads back to the apartment to describe the run in detail.
The team formulates a plan of assault, while still needing to hash out the details such as a path through the carrier, and some more legwork. Sailors from the carrier had a disturbance while on shore leave in Peru (after a fight a bar caught on fire, which then spread to consume the whole block…) forcing the command to limit shore leave to a small section of sailors at a time and for limited time blocks. After this the team decides to break for the evening before starting their diving and climbing lessons in the morning Friday, leading up to a daring infiltration and ex-filtration of a new CAS aircraft carrier on Saturday.